The main benefits of Tenova Pyromet’s water-cooled furnace tapholes include:

• Providing an effective means of extending the life of taphole refractories.
• Promotes the formation of a protective frozen slag layer.
• Provides mechanical support to the refractory, facilitating replacement of tapping channel bricks without disturbing the surrounding lining.
• Facilitates more effective tapping machine interfacing and operation for taphole opening and closing, also extending taphole life.
• Taphole designs, specifically matte and metal tapholes, can be integrated with Tenova’s MEGTEC ® non-explosive cooling media system to further improve safety in taphole operations.

Tenova taphole designs use FEA and CFD techniques to predict and optimize wear patterns and thermal performance.